


look up and see infinity

by jackiednp



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-03
Packaged: 2019-05-15 00:50:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14780520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackiednp/pseuds/jackiednp
Summary: dan wakes up and phil is gone(tw: implied character death,butwith a happy ending)





	look up and see infinity

 

When Dan cracks his eyes open, his chin slightly damp from drool and his eyes crusty with sleep, he doesn’t remember anything. 

Instinctively he reaches out next to him; fumbles for something, no — _ someone—  _ that he knows should be there next to him, someone warm and soft and who feels like home. His hand wander across the duvet, searching for an arm or a leg or just  _ something  _ to hold onto, but he comes up empty. Dan frowns. 

He groans and rolls over, expecting to bump into another body. He doesn’t. 

“Phil?” he asks then, dragging out the ‘i’ in another groan as he pushes himself up from his pillow. 

Silence.

He scrunches his eyes shut for a moment to get himself to wake up, and he props himself onto his elbows to look around the room. The sun is filtering through the blinds and he squints, the light too strong and too vicious for him to open his eyes completely. 

The room is empty, almost eerily so, and a strange feeling of awry fills his gut.  _ Something is wrong _ .

His eyes fall upon the bundle of clothes by the bed. It’s his suit. The expensive black one his parents had bought him only a week ago, with the black tie and the stale blazer, and for another blissful second he doesn’t remember.

Until the next, when he does.

It comes back in flashes; a phone call from the police, the sad look from the doctor, the pain in Kathryn’s voice, the panicked tweets from fans, the casket, the prayers, the gravestone. It hits him like a punch in the gut, like a gunshot to the chest, and for a second he’s convinced that he’s going to die from the pain that swallows him whole.

He lies awake in his, no –  _ their _ bed, staring up at the roof and trying his best to breathe. It’s hard. It’s hard when it feels like the weight of the entire world is pushing down on his chest, and it takes him a good twenty minutes to collect himself enough to simply drag himself out of the bed.

It’s been three weeks and two days. He should be getting better. He shouldn’t be forgetting, shouldn’t be blissfully ignorant every single morning, only to get hit by the excruciating pain that the truth brings with it. 

Dan is good at beating himself up about it, even though he knows that Phil wouldn’t have it. He’d be angry at him, furious about him not sleeping properly, not eating, forcing himself out of bed but only to move to the sofa. It used to be hard to stay afloat even before it happened, but without Phil there to keep him sane… well, it was impossible. 

Today, though, he’d eat. He’d promised his mum to take something from the filled up fridge she’d left him, because if he didn’t she threatened with taking him back to Wokingham, away from home, away from Phil. In all honesty it would probably do him good, but he couldn’t. There was no way in hell he’d leave this apartment, leave  _ home _ .

Phil would hate him for that too. He’d want him to move on, to get his shit together and to leave Phil behind, but Phil wasn’t here. He was dead and Dan was alone.

He pours some milk over a bowl of crunchy nut and sits down by the kitchen table. He takes a mouthful, chewing and swallowing, but it’s completely tasteless. If anything it reminds him of chewing on wet cardboard, and maybe he should just throw the mushy mess into the garbage to be done with it. Or he could eat it. 

He knows he should.

Most of it is gone by the time he places the plate in the sink. He doesn’t feel much better, he doesn’t really feel much at all, and with a deep breath he makes his way into the lounge. There he takes his place on the sofa – nowhere near his normal crease – and curls up into the blanket that Phil always had draped around his shoulders.

It still smells of him. Maybe it’s because Dan had sprayed Phil’s cologne on it, maybe it was mostly an illusion, but it didn’t matter. It smells like him, and Dan shuts his eyes as he cuddles into the softness, pretending that all of this is just a bad dream that he’ll wake up from in a second. 

When he opens his eyes again, he’s still alone, still sat with the blanket draped around him and with tears streaming down his cheeks. He swallows.

He puts on Buffy after a few minutes of staring blankly out in space. 

He decides on the first episode of the first season, solely because it had been Phil’s favourite. It was also the episode that Phil would put on when Dan was feeling down; he’d make them some coffee and popcorn, and Dan would rest his head over Phil’s chest as he listened to his steady heart beat with the intro to the show playing in the background. Phil would stroke Dan’s curls away from his eyes, placing a gentle kiss on the top of his head and mumble ‘ _ I love you, you know that _ ’ into his ear as Dan counted the rhythmic thuds. It always made him feel a little bit better.

Now, though, it only makes Dan feel worse. He knew it would — this was the easiest and most effective way of torturing himself with memories. Maybe he shouldn’t do it, maybe it makes it harder, but he can’t let go. He needs this.

He stays in that corner, nestled into the blanket and sleeping on and off until noon. His heart is heavy, his stomach growling from hunger, but he still doesn’t feel the usual burning sensation that reminds him to eat. He only feels empty; empty and hopeless.

With a deep inhale, as the sound of a vampire violently dies in the background, Dan stretches out his stale legs to place his feet on the ground. His limbs hurt from being still for so long, and with the last of his energy he pushes himself up from the sofa.

He feels disgusting. He hasn’t washed his hair in way too long and he smells slightly of sweat, but taking a shower is impossible. He figures that brushing his teeth should make him feel at least that tiny bit better, and after a good few minutes he feels as though he’s collected enough willpower to make his way to the bathroom.

It’s harder than he ever though it would be. Even before, when he’d been on the wrong meds and he’d felt as numb as he thought was humanly possible, he could still manage to brush his teeth. Showering, however, was another thing, but brushing his teeth? No problem. Now, it takes him a good ten minutes of staring at his own reflection in the mirror with his hands clutched to the sink before his hands find the toothbrush and runs it under the water tap. 

He makes it, though. It’s hard, it takes a lot of time, but he does feel marginally better when he pads out of the bathroom again and heads straight to the bedroom. He doesn’t bother to turn off the TV or to check if the front door is locked. 

The room is dark. He likes it that way, because he can’t see all the things that would otherwise remind him of Phil. He can’t see the checkered green and blue duvet, he can’t see the glasses that is still sat on the nightstand or the abundance of bright t-shirts that are scattered across the floor and that he didn’t have the heart to pick up.

Instead there is darkness, and even if Dan hates the dark with a burning passion, it’s better to fear for monsters under the bed than to feel the pain from the loss of the love of his life.

He climbs in under the duvet, his heart resting low in his gut and a tightness draped over his chest, making it hard for him to breathe. He won’t hurt in his sleep. This world won’t be the real world, and Phil will be back. At least, he’ll forget about it in the morning, and maybe get another blissful minute of ignorance. 

He falls asleep to the thought of ocean eyes and bright smiles, the feeling of fingers brushing over his skin and someone calling his name over and over and over.

  
  


Dan’s eyes snap open. 

“Dan, thank god you’re awake.”

He blinks. The sunlight is beaming in through the windows, making the room blindingly white. It’s too bright.

Someone is beside him. He can feel their skin on his, feel an arm thrown over his stomach and a hand gently caressing his chin.

At first he freezes. He can’t place it — where is he? Who is he with? What is going on?

Then his eyes focus on a face, the one face that he knows by heart. Blue eyes, laced with streaks of yellow and pools of green. A slightly crooked nose that sits above soft and curled lips. Eyebrows that are just slightly furrowed and a crease that sits between them, the black mop of hair pushed back to expose a white forehead.

It’s him. He’s alive. 

At first, he doesn’t believe it, and he closes his eyes in denial.  _ It’s my mind playing tricks,  _ he thinks.  _ It’s too good to be true.  _

“You were talking in your sleep,” the voice he knows even with his eyes closed mumbles, “you sounded so worried.”

“You’re dead.” His voice is croaky and raspy, coming out harsher than he means to, but he can’t believe it. 

“Really?” he asks. “M’guessing this is heaven then.”

Dan opens his eyes again. “But.. you were, I was- I was alone and you were dead. You were-“

“I’m not dead.” Phil’s lips twitches. “Or I wasn’t dead last time I checked, at least.”

He reaches forward again and lets his fingertips brush over the skin on Dan’s chin, continuing down his neck. The faint stubble on his jaw itches a little as Phil’s fingers run over it, but Dan can’t feel anything but his heart beating in his throat.  _ It was a dream. _

The lack of an answer makes Phil knit his brows together in a more concerning way, and he shifts so that they’re looking into each other’s eyes. “In the dream... I was dead?”

Dan swallows and then nods slowly. His eyes suddenly feel blank, an itching and burning sensation creeping up behind his eyelids, and he curses at himself for being so weak. 

Phil moves forward then, sneaking his arms around Dan’s body and pressing him to his chest. He places a soft kiss to the skin beneath Dan’s ear before leaning in and whispering, “I’m right here, though.”

Dan sniffs into Phil’s embrace. “Don’t you dare go and die on me, okay?”

Phil loses his grip, but only enough so that he can lean down and so that their faces are aligned. Slowly, he presses his forehead to Dan’s and their lips brush together.

“I would never,” he whispers, before closing the distance between them.  
  


**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on tumblr!! @retrohowell
> 
> [title is: look up and see infinity, look down and see nothing by mayday parade]


End file.
